And Chub, I've never seen chub make a beeline for a bait as they do for prawns, it's quite a sight in clear water
I started to use peeled prawns back in early 1977 before they had become a standard bait for the coarse angler, and were never even mentioned in the Angling press other than very occasionally when someone had used an unpeeled prawn for catching the odd Salmon.
Back in those early days very few Chub had even seen them let alone been caught on one; and I had just left the RN and had started to work in a freezer food storage company where I had access to lots of broken packets of peeled prawns, and I just thought that they might be a great bait for Chub so I tried them on the river Kennet for Chub and was very pleasantly surprised by the positive bites that I got when I used them.
I remember when I had driven past Dobs Weir on the river Lea after a night out chasing Carp at a nearby lake and I had a packet of prawns in my freezer bag so decided to give them a try there.
Dobbs Weir that sunny day was packed with every swim occupied by someone, but I waded out to a sunken barge in between two swims and started to fish from there.
Within a minute or two I had my rod almost yanked from my hand and had a very nice Chub on, and I continued to catch Chub on prawn, then the guy on my right came over to ask what bait I was using, because very few fish had been coming out that day around the weir; and I ended up sharing my prawns with him and we both started Catching Chub.
I also caught my very first 5lb Chub from Kings Weir using a peeled prawn too.
But nowerdays everyone but the barman’s daughter is using prawns and they’re no longer a rare bait and no longer seem as good a bait as they were back in those early days.
I used to hook them as in the diagram below which was almost guaranteed to hook my Chub in the corner of its mouth nearly every time; using a light link leger.
The prawns I used were not the cheap and colourless ones with their flavours boiled out of them, like you get in the average supermarket, but were the better quality ones with some of their juices and flavour still in them (I didn’t have to buy and pay for them myself as they were from broken packets that I found in the storage freezers).
Keith